The present invention relates to a radio pager which receives messages by way of an information delivery service provided by an information delivery provider, to an incoming call paging method for use with the radio pager, and to a message reading method for use with the radio pager.
In an existing information delivery service which utilizes a radio pager for selectively paging a user by radio, messages received by the radio pager are classified, divided and stored into hierarchical folders of individual addresses, and the thus-stored messages are managed. The radio pager is selectively set with regard to whether or not to notify the user of the arrival of all incoming information messages for each address each time an incoming message arrives. When the information message stored in a folder is to be read, the address of that information message is selected, and a target folder is selected and determined by retrieving folders in descending order from the highest-order folder to a lower-order folder. Thus, the information message is read.
However, the existing radio pager mentioned above is arranged so as to select whether or not to notify the user of the arrival of all incoming information messages for each address each time an incoming information message arrives. Because of such a configuration, it has been impossible to selectively set the radio pager on a per-field basis in such a way as to notify the user of the arrival of a message in some field but not to notify the user of the arrival of a message in another field. Further, when an incoming message is to be read, folders must be retrieved in descending order from the highest-order folder to a lower-order folder, thus consuming much time to read the message.